This is a collection of some of the finest pieces of one of Australia’s most important and respected poets. It is a generous and ambitious project; reflective and joyful in equal measure, profound and playful, Finishing Stroke is rare in offering a deceptively joyful immediacy which reveals more and more of its intellectual antecedents on reflection and re-reading.

Peter Murphy's work is always a linguistic and visual joy and the poems in Finishing Stroke are no exception. His regular readers will appreciate his continuing exploration of the ordinary to expose the extraordinary; new readers will delight in the discovery of a poet of rare irreverence and wit.